Meliodas looked the same as he had three thousand years ago, and that was the problem. He sat at a corner table in the weathered tavern, turning a cold mug in his hands, while around him young men grew gray and died in the span of a few lifetimes. A curse held him frozen. It held Elizabeth too, bound to die young and return young, again and again, while he waited. He had decided to break it. But he could not break it alone. To fight the curse, he needed the six who once fought beside him. And he had no idea where any of them were. So he started here, where travelers drank and talked. He bought rounds. He asked questions. He listened to merchants trade rumors about a giantess guarding a northern forest, about a drunk who could lift a mountain, about a Fairy King seen above a lake. Each name felt close enough to touch. None of it told him where to go first. A pink pig trotted up to his boot and sniffed. Then it froze. "Boss?" the pig said. "You're alive. You're actually alive." The animal's voice cracked. It had waited at this tavern for years, Meliodas realized, scrounging scraps and watching the door. Before he could answer, the room went quiet. A woman stepped through the doorway. She was small, dark-haired, dressed in purple, and she wore a violet gem at her throat that caught the firelight. The drinkers shifted away from her without meaning to. Meliodas knew her at once. "Merlin," he said. He stood so fast his chair scraped the floor. She crossed the room and set a thin iron box on his table. She did not smile. "You've been asking loud questions," she said. "Loud questions reach the wrong ears." "I need the others," Meliodas said. "All of them. I'm breaking the curse." Merlin's hand stilled on the box. For a moment the old mage looked tired, which he had never once seen before. "I know where each of them is," she said. "I've tracked them for a century. But Meliodas, the curse is not the only thing that woke." She opened the box. Inside lay a cracked gray stone, pulsing with a faint red light. Meliodas felt the heat of it against his face. "When you began searching," Merlin said, "something answered. This stone marks the pieces of the seal that bound our old enemy. One piece is already broken. Each friend you gather sits beside another piece. Reach them, and you may free them. You may also free what sleeps there." Meliodas closed the box. His search had a map now. It also had a cost. "Then I start with the nearest," he said. "Where?" Merlin pointed north. "The forest," she said. "The giantess. And the first broken seal."